Mapping Zim’s start-up ecosystem
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monitoring of organisations.
In a start-up, dashboards play an especially important role in surfacing real-time metrics. This information is essential for helping the executive team make realtime decisions. Ecosystem mapping tools help institutions and individuals focused on entrepreneurship support to better understand the factors that influence the success and growth rate of entrepreneurs in a region.
The ecosystem mapping tools support ecosystem builders, incubators, and policy makers through the process of asking the right questions to see the progress of their start-up scene and develop well-grounded interventions to achieve systemic growth.
These tools are suitable for both early stage and more mature ecosystems, in emerging as well as developed economies. Other ecosystem mapping tools include ecosystem reports and visualisation tools.
Gap analysis and policy
recommendations
Zimbabwe has an emerging start-up ecosystem. Based on this realisation it is important to focus most of the attention on ideation stage. These policy recommendations are intended to provide a set of examples of policies that can be applied to support the ecosystems gaps and constrains being faced. To build a community there is need to: Strengthen coordination among multiple stakeholders to support the growth of the ecosystem.
Ecosystem coordination increases the effectiveness of community-building events and connectivity among clusters. There is need to build the capacity of mediators and networking assets to increase community and clusters. Networking assets and accelerators in particular, create clusters of connections, increasing the community and helping to expand it.
Networking assets are community building events, skills training events, collaboration spaces and networks of mentors. These mediators also serve to attract and train new talent to the ecosystem, expanding its community and the potential pipeline of indigenous start-ups.
There is also a need to create a network of incubators/accelerators with a clear focus on community building and skills training, and this will result in expansion of start-up clusters and diversification of the ecosystem across the cities. There is need to promote and support the ecosystem events as this will result in expanding the community.
To capacitate start-ups with skills, there is need to expand practical education in universities and through rapid skills training programmes and accelerators connected with public education programmes. Public policies can catalyse and support both practical educational programs to address the skills gaps in ecosystems such as coding bootcamps and hackathons.
On supporting infrastructure, there is need to increase capacity building of mentors and foster the creation of angel networks. There is need for capacitation of incubators and accelerators and facilitation the entry of international talent from the Zim Diaspora, for example mentors, entrepreneurs or capacity builders, into the ecosystem. Support can also be provided to increase the capacity of managers and mentors through training and capacity-building programmes of accelerators and outside mentors. Enhancing the management, operations, and practical training of these actors is key for the maturity of the ecosystem.
There is need to focus on managerial support and attraction of mentors with start-up and practical entrepreneurship and business experience as this is key to increasing quality of this support infrastructure. In other countries, the government, jointly with the World Bank, have designed policy programs to provide support to accelerators through self-improvement plans that focus on quality.
A way to address the lack of experience and knowledge of mentors is to attract international talent with such practical acumen. There are several support programs that can achieve this goal, ranging from events that gather international talent and connect it to the ecosystem to more structural programs. On investment there is need to catalyse early stage financing and increase quality of pipeline investment. Further support to address financial access and capacity-related challenges by focusing on building the investment pipeline is needed.
On constraints there is need to address processes constraints such as access to loans and funding. Policies related to conducting business are regarded as constraints insofar as they are perceived to lack central coordination and/or do not facilitate the growth of entrepreneurship.
The overall rank for Doing Business in the Zimbabwe (140 out of 190 economies) confirms the need to improve time, cost and procedures for Start-Up and entrepreneurial activity.
There has been an improvement in the ranking from 155 to 140. There is need to iterate the policy approach as needed and address new gaps or growth hurdles as they arise. As the ecosystem grows and evolves into more maturity, new needs will emerge and other specific policies would be more applicable.
Nokuthula G Moyo-Muparuri is a lecturer at the Midlands State University in the Faculty of Business Sciences. She is also the Founder of the Institute of Applied Entrepreneurship. The mission of the Institute is Business Skills Development and Start-Up Ecosystem Development. The Institute has started an initiative of developing Start-Up Zim Chapters. This is meant to capacitate those who want to establish Start-Up Ecosystems in their Towns, Cities, Colleges and Universities. Those interested can contact the Institute on +263718747621.